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We are you. Calgarians concerned about the process, cost and the IOC. We are concerned about the risks associated with hosting the games at this time in our economic recovery. We are concerned about the IOC, their history and reputation risk with going into a business relationship with this entity. Where they should be leaders in sport, they have fallen short in these areas:

Gender equality

Athlete doping

Athlete protections

We don’t feel this is the time to pursue a 2026 bid. The process has been rushed by the deadlines imposed by the IOC and has put our City in a bad negotiating position. The competitive bid process ensures that Cities will do everything they can to provide the IOC with the biggest most bombastic event that money can buy. The City of Calgary is in a crunch to get a bid together and have completely neglected public engagement. City staff are over-leveraged and scrambling to make this happen, with more and more resources being sucked into the process. This is contrasted by to 200 plus community engagement meetings that were held in Vancouver. The City has provided more in depth engagement on creating additional bus lanes than this mega project that is comparable in size and scope to building a nuclear power plant.

Clearly, the priority is to push this bid through with as little public engagement as possible. This is why we oppose the 2026 bid.